Vladek Sheybal (born Władysław Rudolf Zbigniew Sheybal; 12 March 1923 – 16 October 1992)[1] was a Polish character actor, singer and director of both television and stage productions.[2] He was well known for his portrayal of the chess grandmasterKronsteen in the James Bond film From Russia with Love (1963), a role for which he had been personally recommended by his friend Sean Connery, and as Otto Leipzig in Smiley's People (1982).[3][4] He also had notable recurring roles as Dr. Douglas Jackson in Gerry Anderson's UFO, Captain Ferreira in the NBC miniseries Shōgun and as Gen. Bratchenko in the 1984 version of Red Dawn.
He became a naturalised British citizen, but remained "fiercely proud of his homeland and its culture".[2]
Life and career
Sheybal was born in Zgierz, near Łódź, in the Second Polish Republic.[5] The son of a university professor, he was attracted to acting at an early age.[1] At the age of 16, he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during the occupation of Poland; escaping twice only to be recaptured and subjected to torture as punishment.[1] After World War II ended, he began performing in Polish theatres and cinemas, earning a reputation as a skilled actor.[1] He appeared in the film Kanał (1957, credited as Władysław Sheybal), directed by Andrzej Wajda, before departing for Paris and then Vienna in 1958 owing to his political opposition to the Communist Party.[6][1]
Having difficulty finding work, he immigrated to Britain in 1959 where his reputation from Polish films lent him enough credibility to support himself teaching acting.[6] He was soon appearing on the London stage, and was hired as the director of the Bromley Little Theatre in 1960.[1] That same year, he directed a production of Modest Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina at Oxford University.[1] This production was seen by executives of the BBC, and it led to work as a director for opera and theatre adaptations on British television in the early 1960s, including works for ITV Play of the Week in 1961 and 1962 and as well as productions for the BBC.[1] In 1964, he had a triumphant success on the British stage as "He" in Leonid Andreyev's He Who Gets Slapped at the Hampstead Theatre.[1]
In 1963, he made his British cinema debut playing the evil secret agent Kronsteen in the James Bond film From Russia with Love.[1] He appeared often in villainous roles or character parts in British cinema up until his death in 1992.[6] He also appeared as Holocaust survivor Egon Sobotnik in the television mini-series QB VII.[7] He had a dual role as "the Director" and as Pierre Louys in Ken Russell's The Debussy Film (1965), one of Russell's composer biopics for the BBC.[8] Other Russell films in which he appeared were Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Women in Love (1969), and The Boy Friend (1971).[9]
In 1977, he won the Dracula Society's prestigious Hamilton Deane Award for his performance in the BBC play Night of the Marionettes, part of the Supernatural series, in which he played a sinister Austrian innkeeper whose life-size puppets supposedly inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.[12][13] Sheybal's final stage appearance was as Friedrich Nietzsche in the Pierre Bourgeade play The Eagle and the Serpent at London's Offstage Downstairs Theatre in 1988.[14]
^Dajbor, Rafał (2022). "Powstaniec, aktor, gej". Replika (in Polish). No. 98. p. 29. ISSN1896-3617. (Vladek był biseksualny; jeszcze w Polsce związany był z Ireną Eichlerówną, w Anglii z nikim nie związał się na stałe, miał romanse zarówno z kobietami, jak i mężczyznami).
